Seven decades ago, Larsen and Toubro made an entry into the Construction and Mining Equipment Industry in India. Its manufacturing facilities in Powai were under consolidation and the company was looking out to expand into other activities as well. India was a fledgling economy with an ambitious line-up of infrastructure development activities involving construction of major dams, steel plants and arterial roads. To fast track these work , there was a need to induct equipment that would build quality and shorten project completion time. It was in this context that L&T took up the distribution of caterpillar products wiz., Dozers, Scrapers, Traxcavators, Motor Graders and Pipelayers for the Indian Market, which grew in popularity. To support these machines for after-sales and repairs as well as to provide operator training, L&T set up Service Station across the country.

 

In 1973, L&T's strategic move transformed the face of Indian Construction Equipment Industry. L&T signed up with Poclain SA-France and introduced its cutting edge excavator technology to the Indian market. 

 

By the nineties, the core sector of the Indian economy had witnessed rapid strides with Hydraulic Excavators and other earthmoving equipment being deployed extensively. Special attachments like Rock Breaker, Log Grappler and others were fried out for the first time successfully. 

 

L&T tied up with Case for a new series of road making machinery such as Vibratory Compactors and Loader Backhoes and set up Pithampur Plant in Madhya Pradesh. L&T was also associated with Albaret, France for the development of Vibratory Compactors and with Terex, USA for assembling Dumping Trucks. 

 

With the Construction Equipment market showing signs of maturity, L&T could foresee a huge opportunity for future and struck a strategic alliance with Komatsu-Japan, one of the world's largest manufacturers of Construction and Mining Equipment, for establishing a joint venture L&T-Komatsu Limited and to usher in a new line of hi-tech products from the Japanese partner, known for its highly reliable and durable machines.

 

These machines were manufactured by L&T-Komatsu Limited for over a decade with the L&T-Komatsu PC200 model creating an all time record by being the largest selling model in India in the 20-tonne class and crossing the milestone of 13,000 units.

 

Later, with the restructuring of the JV, the manufacturing of Hydraulic Excavators was taken up independently by Komatsu India while L&T started manufacturing of complementary equipment such as Vibratory Compactors/Wheel Loaders at L&T Construction Equipment Limited (LTCEL), the fully owned subsidiary of L&T, besides taking up contract manufacturing for KIPL.

 

L&T track record in Mining Equipment Business includes supply of the mammoth 830E/240 Ton Dump Trucks to Hindustan Zinc Limited ushering in mega mining operations, environment-friendly D475A Dozers fitted with rippers for Coal India Limited, the most popular shovels in PC 2000 Hydraulic Excavators giving users unmatched value. 

 

In the Construction Equipment Business, LTCEL's ambitious launch of a new series of indigenous models in Wheel Loaders and Vibratory Compactors heralded the 'Make in India' initiative. It is continuing with L&T 300 Hydraulic Excavator, which is an improved version of the original 300CK machine. 

 

Another significant development relates to L&T's strategic alliance with Scania-Sweden in 2007 which brought into India the multi axle Tipper Trucks for mining transportation. 

 

With substantial investments made in establishing Service Centres with modern tools and specialized workshops, L&T has been effectively handling onsite assembly and critical repairs of large size equipment. L&T has been working closely with various customers providing value added services at their sites while maintaining high uptime of machines. L&T expertise today extends to managing the remote assets on long-term basis. This is enabled by L&T's Central Warehouse in Nagpur that handles over 30,000 parts and is connected to 30 depots stocking Genuine Parts pan-India.